Zombie Master

My first computer came with a hard disk... well, that probably wasn't my first computer, but anyway, the first computer I think of as mine. The hard disk volume name was pre-assigned as 20mbmaster.

So of course, the computer became known as Zombiemaster. (You can all stop laughing now at the back about the concept of a hard disk that was 20 megabytes big.) My next computer was called Son of Zombiemaster, and although somewhere in there I had Big Bugger, we did eventually get Doctor Zombiemaster and finally, a couple of months ago, Herr Doktor Professor Zombiemaster. Doctor Zombiemaster, I think, had a a hard disk crash so we gave it to someone else with a spare disk in it. We got a new laptop, whose name included Zombiemaster.

Some of the machines went to the recycling station on e-Waste day this year. One of the recycled machines, don't ask me which, lives on in Herr Doktor Professor Zombiemaster as a virtual XP environment running inside the Windows 7 machine.

The virtual machine and the desktop machine call each other ZM3 and ZM4. I can't remember the laptop's name but it includes Zombiemaster. The net result is that I have no clue where files end up when I save them. I think I've worked out how to save on the virtual machine versus the real machine on the keyboard I'm typing on now, but when I look on the network for where to post stuff from the laptop, I just really have no clue. It certainly does not help to have to move from XP to Windows 7 as I move computers.

Truth be told, I liked MSDOS. At least DOS was transparent and logical. The big, fluffy, friendly icons of Windows 7 do nothing for me. In my life of course I file things in filing cabinets in manila folders, but the half-open Windows 7 folders in "libraries" do nothing for me. They look like they'll lose documents, and anyway the library concept continues to escape me. As for the difference between "shared" and "public"...

It's entirely possible that I will shortly tell the kids to get off my lawn. In the meantime, we are going to rename the computers "Server", "Virtual", "Lyle's laptop" and "STB's laptop" so I can get a clue as I'm scouting round. I may eventually ask for everything to be downloaded or saved to the server rather than the requesting machine to save me doing it manually. Shortly after that, I'll agree to upload everything to the cloud about a week before North Korea lays down a really big magnetic pulse and everything in the cloud disappears.

It'll be liberating.